


It's Okay

by maie_373



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Really Needs a Hug, Darcy Lewis Is a Good Bro, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:49:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23598646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maie_373/pseuds/maie_373
Summary: Darcy expected the full on coffee machine with the selection of 5 different coffee beans. And 5 types of milk. It's Tony Stark's kitchen, after-all.What she doesn't expect is for the Winter Soldier to come in and try and kill her.WARNING: Has a scene of a panic attack. If you feel uncomfortable about this, please do not read.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Darcy Lewis
Comments: 8
Kudos: 171





	It's Okay

**Author's Note:**

> No beta. Edit:now betad. yay.
> 
> I impulsively wrote this and now I'm posting it. Might edit later and write more? Maybe?? Should I???

Darcy finally arrives home after a long day of work. 

The ray of afternoon light is shining in through the window, lightening up the dim room, the warm sun colouring the worn, leather couch and the rusty carpet. The keys to her apartment clank on to the rich mahogany wood counter, in the same spot just like any other day without fail. She reaches her arm out and switches the lights on, sighing in relief of _finally_ being home.

Darcy uses the tip of her right boot to shove off the other, repeating the process with her now bare left foot while leaning on the door for support. Determined to keep her no shoes rule she had made ever since she started living in the apartment a couple of months ago, Darcy makes sure to put her shoes away in the designated area. 

So far, she’s been pretty good at keeping that rule. Except for that one time when she came home super wasted after going to a pub for the first time in New York since her and Jane returned from Mexico. But that didn’t really count.he had brought a guy home from that pub and she was absolutely way too buzzed and determined to have sex with him to give a single thought about their shoes. 

Darcy literally skips to the kitchen and opens the fridge to get her much deserved reward after a hard day’s work: coffee. She always made sure to have some ice coffee stocked in her fridge, be that store bought or homemade. Being the sleep deprived, overworking, unpaid intern she was, there was no fucking way she could ever live without her coffee. Well, use to be unpaid, anyways.

She has to admit, life was so much better now ever since her boss lady Jane was offered to work (and live) in New York by Tony Stark himself. Just to continue her research. Going with Jane had included countless benefits, including paid rent, paid work (about time), paid coffee during work, heck, everything was paid. Although Darcy did get offered to live at Stark Tower like Jane, she declined and decided to live in an apartment a couple blocks away from the Tower. 

Totally not because she was too much of a chicken to handle living and sharing a place with America's renowned super heroes; The Avengers. Definitely not.

Her usual work day involved getting up at 7am, walking to the Tower, she generally had breakfast with Jane at a cafe next to it, before spending 10 whole hours with barely any breaks sorting through Jane’s research papers, typing them up, writing reports from them etc. Not to mention making sure her boss lady was humaning properly, like eating and showering, which was why she ate breakfast with her, so Jane didn’t pass out during the day from lack of nutrients. If she was being honest, that was the main part of her job.

Jane was way more healthy than she used to be before they moved, especially because Thor was around more and he is literally one of the only people who could actually get Jane to be human, with social interaction and all. 

Darcy hums a little tune under her breath while she takes a generous sip straight from the ju, moaning loudly as the heavenly liquid travels through her esophagus. God, she was so glad it was finally Friday. Which meant nothing but staying on her couch and watching netflix and relaxing and drinking coffee, maybe checking up on Jane once in a while and then drinking more coffee. 

Her ecstatic mood ended soon after, when her phone rang by the door, Led Zeppelin blaring obnoxiously from its speakers . 

_There’s only one person who actually calls me,_ she thought. _Jane._

“Aw, come on, man! Again?” Darcy flops her head back, complaining excessively .

Groaning, she violently sets the jug on the counter before heading to her phone to pick it up, pressing the receive button and holding it to her ear.

“What.”

“Hey Darcy, I actually needed some help with the data, I think I just found something that could help the research, and-” Jane blabbers, but Darcy cuts her off.

“And you need my help with your genius epiphany, ‘kay cool, I got it. Be there in 10.” 

“God, thank you so much Darcy, I wouldn’t know what to do without you. See you! I’ll be in Lab C.”

It was not the first time Darcy has been called upon after work by an overexcited Jane, begging for Darcy to aid her when she had some sort of sciencey epiphany. At least it’s not 2am on a Saturday morning like last time, though. Darcy was still in her work clothes and hadn’t spilt anything too incriminating on them yet, so she could go back to the Tower straight away.

She treads back to her delicious coffee and sighs, taking another generous sip, before kissing the jug, staring at it adoringly as if it were her baby. 

“I’ll be back, okay? You just wait for me in the fridge.” Her reward will have to come later.

Darcy arrives at the Tower and goes up to the Lab where Jane is in 10 minutes, just as she said, and was greeted by Jane frantically typing into her desktop while looking at a code or some sciencey piece shit printed out next to her. Jane looks up, her shoulders tense and her eyes filled to the brim with excitement and slight sleep deprivation. 

“Darcy! You came! Thank god. Here.” She shoves a bunch of papers into Darcy’s arms. “I need you to type these up into a report, and then come and help me out here with my readings after that, okay? I think we might actually have a lead this time.”

Turns out they didn’t.

Darcy leaves the lab at 2am with a grumpy Jane and unsatisfying results. The readings had led Jane back to the start of the problem, not even giving them a hint of solution. Unhappy, sulky Jane was the worst kind of Jane, who would just stare at the results on the screen for countless hours getting irritated. Hell, unhappy Jane doesn’t even do anything productive about work, let alone eat or sleep. 

Which is why Darcy has to forcefully tug her out of the Lab and pull her into the elevator to take her to her apartment on the 68th floor, located several storeys above the lab. 

“Jane, you gotta stop sulking. Your face right now could probably even turn off Thor, man. That’s saying a lot, because he’s usually turned on by you doing anything.” 

Jane glares daggers at her, but doesn’t respond.

The elevator dings quietly before the doors open to Jane and Thor’s apartment. They didn’t have doors, since they had the entire floor to themselves, and technically no one could visit unless they gave permission to them, what with FRIDAY bio scanning everyone that came in and all. 

Darcy makes Jane take her lab coat off and change into pajamas before she does the same thing. She has her own set of clothes and toiletries at the apartment, since she crashes here a lot, especially after ending work late at night, something that has happened on numerous occasions. 

It was already way too early in the morning, there is no way she is going home at this time. It’s just easier to sleep in the guest bedroom, which was basically her room since a relative amount of her stuff was in it, and go to work the next morning. 

After forcingJane into bed and generously tucking her in (and maybe threatening the safety of some of her documents to go to sleep), Darcy goes to her own room as well, and dives into bed without bothering to take her makeup off, her consciousness lost the second her head hit the pillow.

She wakes up the next morning at 7am, since unbelievably her body never let her sleep past that time, no matter what time she fell asleep at. Darcy groans and stretches while she walks to the bathroom connected to the bedroom, her back and neck cracking from all the typing she had done the night before. 

Darcy takes a quick shower and looks at herself in the mirror. She definitely doesn’t look the very best, but she’s been worse. The bags under her eyes aren’t as bad as expected, and there is a shine of life in her mostly dead eyes. 

She sees Jane in the living room after slapping some makeup on as well as changing. 

“Morning, Jane.” 

“Morning, Darcy. Sorry if I was grumpy to you last night, it’s just so frustrating that it seemed like such a lead and it just led us back to the beginning, you know?” Jane frowns, clearly still upset.

“Nah, all good. Besides, it’s not like we found nothing, right? Gotta stay positive.”

“I guess.”

Her stomach growls.

“Do you have any food in your fridge?” Darcys asks, although she knew the answer.

“Not really. We have pop tarts, but we are definitely not eating any for breakfast.”

“Ugh. Pop tarts are totally real food, Jane, come on.” Sad puppy dog eyes don’t usually work on Jane most days, and today is one of those most days.

“Nope, let’s just go to the common floor. There’s always food there.” Jane says, already standing up to head towards the elevator.

“Fine. But can’t we just go to the cafe? It’s not really that far.” Darcy pointed out. 

“No, I feel like something different, I’m getting tired of just egg benedict.” Darcy frowns at her. “There’s a full on coffee machine in the kitchen.”

She caves. 

The kitchen did have a huge coffee machine, containing a selection of 5 different types of coffee beans. There were even 4 milks other than normal milk in the fridge. Not that she was complaining, though. Yep. Not complaining at all. 

Jane heads down to the lab early while Darcy is still sipping on her precious coffee, claiming that she needed to make up for the disappointing results. She gives Darcy half a day off as well, thank god. She was kind of expecting that, since that’s what Jane usually does after she calls Darcy in outside of her regular work time. 

What she didn’t expect was the Winter Soldier walking out of the elevator 15 minutes later, and he was surprisingly one of the hottest and most attractive men she had ever seen. Darcy didn’t have time to observe his great brown locks or his striking eyes though, since the second he saw her, he disappeared right in front of her and the next moment a hard, cold material was grabbing her neck. 

Grabbing was perhaps the wrong word. More like crushing. 

It took a while for her to realize what was happening. And when she did, she immediately tried to gasp for air, bringing her hands up to claw at what was holding on to her neck so hard. He didn’t let go. Darcy felt like she was dying. Well, she actually was dying, in fact, very painfully. 

_This is how I’m going to die,_ She thought, _I haven’t even done one third of the things on my bucket list._

The ability to think now almost nonexistent, Darcy looked into the eyes that were in front of her. They were so sharp and vibrant, yet so cold and lacking in any emotion at all. 

In a final attempt to save herself, she gasps out something that barely even resembles a word, but it saves her.

The man widens his eyes and lets go of her neck instantly, the layers of metal of what now Darcy recognized as a prosthetic scratching her flesh from the abrupt action. Her throat clenches in a way she never knew was possible, and immediately she drops down onto the cold marble floor and coughs violently, her body attempting to take in as much air as it could with its new freedom.

“Oh, god.” Darcy looks up.

The Winter Soldier now looks down at her with wide horrified eyes, shaking as he stood helplessly. She sees him shaking and breathing raggedly, and instantly she is worried. She reaches her hand out to him, but he jolts back, and stumbles weakly away from her, to the living room.

Darcy ignores her aching body’s complaints, and staggers after him. He hasn’t gone that far. He’s crouching in front of the sofa, clutching at his chest and is wheezing, as if he is having a heart attack. She knows, though It’s a panic attack.

“Hey, Buddy.” She approaches him, making sure to let him know softly that she is there, so she won’t make him panic even more. He flinches, but his eyes tell Darcy he isn’t really there, and is lost in the pain and fear that is drowning him inside his head.

“You’re okay, buddy. It’s okay, you’re here, yeah?” She gently pats his shaking back, whispering quietly to him, crouching next to him. 

“I-I c-c-can’t, god, n-” His voice is dry as a desert. His breaths are short, inconsistent, and sounds like metal scraping against concrete. 

Darcy stays with him and keeps muttering warm words of comfort for a whole other 20 minutes before his breathing resembles something of a normal human. Or super human, take your pick. His breathing becomes more even, and his hand is no longer clutching at his chest. There is still so much fear and anxiety in his eyes, but they do not hold as much haunting. Slowly, he becomes quiet.

“I’m sorry.” 

His voice is barely a whisper, but she hears him. 

“It’s okay.” She tells him, meaning every word. “You’re okay now, you just had a panic attack, buddy. You’re got through it, I’m proud of you.” The poor thing looks exhausted, and so, so lifeless just laying in her arms. 

“I tried to kill you.” He states. 

“Yep,” Darcy does not sugar coat it, “but it’s okay. You know me know and you’re not going to do it again. Right?”

He nods in confirmation

”Good. Lay on the couch, rest. You need it.” He obliges. His movements are like those of a robot, and it worries Darcy. 

She knew about the Winter Soldier from Jane, since she had more connection to the Avengers, and especially because he also lives in the Tower. She heard about the abduction by HYDRA and all the torture and brainwashing he had to endure, and how Captain America had been absolutely devestated by the things he was forced to do. 

Jane told her that he rarely was on the common floor, and they had never really talked in any way apart from a quick nod or greeting sometimes when they passed, a rare occasion on its own. Darcy got that. Who would want to see people he had previously hurt and attempted to kill, right? Even if he wasn't aware when he did those things. Those horrible, horrible things.

“I’ll go get you some water, buddy.” Darcy stood up and returned to the kitchen. There was no trace there of her almost getting killed 10 minutes earlier, but she unconsciously gulped, hand drifting up to her neck, where she was certain was bruised. Trying to ignore the daunting memory of it, she grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and returned to where the Winter Soldier lay, and offered it to him silently. He only stared up at her, so she placed it on the coffee table, knowing she couldn’t force him to do anything.

Darcy smiled at him in a way she only hoped was comforting. 

“I’m gonna go now, buddy. I’ll call someone to come look after you when I do, ‘kay?” She turns around to leave, but she feels a cool grasp on her hand. 

It’s the same metal arm that gripped onto her neck, the same arm that could have potentially killed her. But this time, it’s so much more weak and helpless, like that of a small child. 

“S-stay. Don’t tell anyone.” The Winter Soldier looks at her with vulnerable, desperate eyes, “Please.”

For some reason, looking at his powerlessness and hearing his fragile voice pains Darcy’s heart in a way it shouldn’t. She instantly wants to give anything to this man that would make him feel protected, safe. 

“Sure, I’ll stay. Is it okay if I touch you?” Darcy remembers about an article she read a while ago that said touching others helped with easing. 

She takes his silence as a yes, and slowly, making sure he can see her every move, shifts her hand and clasps it with his metal one. It seemed to work, as far as Darcy could see. His body became more relaxed, and breaths became slower, deeper, and steadier. His eyes glanced up to her, still showing fear and uneasiness, but there was something else there that gave Darcy a warm feeling in her chest. Trust, maybe.

As time passes, his eyes start to flutter, drowsiness replacing the tense expression on his face into a lighter one. 

“Sleep, Bucky.” Darcy uses his name for the first time. It rolls off of her tongue smoothly.

“Will you stay?” Bucky mumbles, nearly entering the realm of sleep.

“Yeah,” Darcy smiles, “I will.”


End file.
